... of the pigeon ( Columba livia ). In vivo studies during different flight modes revealed variation in strain profile, activation timing and duration, and contractile cycle frequency of the humerotriceps, suggesting that this muscle may alter wing shape in diverse ways. To examine the multifunction potential...

...Richard Holland; Caterina Filannino; Anna Gagliardo SUMMARY The cues by which homing pigeons are able to return to a home loft after displacement to unfamiliar release sites remain debated. A number of experiments in which migratory birds have been treated with a magnetic pulse have produced...

... cohesion can lead to more accurate outcomes than solitary decisions. In homing pigeons, a classic model in avian orientation studies, individuals learn habitual routes home, but whether and how co-navigating birds acquire and share route-based information is unknown. Using miniature GPS loggers, we...

... upstroke a forward-directed force (thrust) is produced at 36% of body weight. Our propeller measurements for downstroke were consistent with previously published values for a pigeon wing in downstroke posture. Usherwood reports a maximum C L : C D of 5.4 for a pigeon wing spun on a propeller...

... required for level flight and the power necessary for potential energy change. Pigeons ( Columba livia ) were trained to fly at varying angles of ascent and descent (60°, 30°,0°, –30°, –60°), and were recorded using high-speed video. Detailed three-dimensional kinematics were obtained from the recordings...

... ask: what conditions are required at the surface of actively respiring, state III, tightly coupled mitochondria to enhance oxygen flow to cytochrome oxidase? Pigeon heart mitochondria were isolated with minimal damage to the outer mitochondrial membrane and were incubated at low oxygen pressures...

...Anna Gagliardo; Paolo Ioalè; Maria Savini; Hans-Peter Lipp; Giacomo Dell'Omo Experiments have shown that homing pigeons are able to develop navigational abilities even if reared and kept confined in an aviary, provided that they are exposed to natural winds. These and other experiments performed...

...Monique Maurice; Henri Gioanni; Anick Abourachid SUMMARY We investigated the effects of several behavioural conditions on the properties of the horizontal optocollic reflex (OCR) in pigeons. The head reflex was triggered by rotating the visual surroundings at different velocities (stimuli steps...

... ( T ASK ) and air temperature ( T AIR ) independently at air speeds( U WIN ) comparable to flying speeds. We used it to measure the influence of T ASK , T AIR and U WIN on plumage and skin temperatures in pigeons having to dissipate a thermal load while constrained at rest in a flight posture. Our...

... and across the wings, and for two sites across the tail, of pigeons flying between two perches. The confounding influence of acceleration on the pressure signals is shown to be small for both wings and tail. The mean differential pressure for the tail during steady, level flight was 25.6 Pa, which, given...

...Liisa M. Peltonen; Ahti Pyörnilä SUMMARY We studied the blood flow over dorsal and abdominal, non-brooding patch skin of two groups of pigeons: one group was thermally acclimated to cold(winter-acclimatized, WAC) while the other group was acclimated to a mesic environment (thermally non...

...E. Ophir; Y. Arieli; J. Marder; M. Horowitz SUMMARY The heat-acclimated rock pigeon is thought to use cutaneous water evaporation (CWE) as the `preferred' route for heat dissipation, and this mechanism is controlled by adrenergic signaling. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis...

...Helmut Prior; Frank Lingenauber; Jörg Nitschke; Onur Güntürkün SUMMARY The pigeon's use of different visuo-spatial cues was studied under controlled laboratory conditions that simulated analogous aspects of a homing situation. The birds first learned the route to a goal that was not visible...

...Gilead Michaeli; Berry Pinshow SUMMARY We assessed respiratory and cutaneous water loss in trained tippler pigeons ( Columba livia ) both at rest and in free flight. In resting pigeons, exhaled air temperature T ex increased with ambient air temperature T a ( T ex =16.3+0.705 T a ) between 15°C...

...Hans G. Wallraff; Jackie Chappell; Tim Guilford ABSTRACT It seems reasonable to assume that pigeons use visual features in the landscape for orientation when they are homing over familiar terrain. Experimental evidence to prove or disprove this possibility is, however, difficult to obtain. Here, we...

... flight. These measurements allow us to characterize the contractile behavior and mechanical power output of the pectoralis under dynamic conditions of slow level flight in pigeons Columba livia . Our recordings confirm that the pigeon pectoralis generates in vivo work loops that begin with the rapid...

...Patrick R. Green; Peter Cheng ABSTRACT Pigeons made 10 flights to a novel perch. Kinematic measurements of these flights were obtained from video recordings, and the forces exerted on the perch on each landing were measured. There was wide variation (20-fold range) in the kinetic energy...

...O. Mathieu-Costello; P. J. Agey; E. S. Quintana; K. Rousey; L. Wu; M. H. Bernstein ABSTRACT We investigated the effect of 2 months of exposure to cold conditions (0–5 °C) on capillarization and on fiber size, distribution and ultrastructure in the pectoralis muscle of nine pigeons ( Columbia livia...

...William R. Corning; Andrew A. Biewener ABSTRACT To evaluate the safety factor for flight feather shafts, in vivo strains were recorded during free flight from the dorsal surface of a variety of flight feathers of captive pigeons ( Columba livia ) using metal foil strain gauges. Strains recorded...

...Jan Eivind Østnes; Claus Bech ABSTRACT Metabolic rate (MR) and various body temperatures were recorded in pigeons Columba livia during gradual lowering of the ambient temperature ( T a ) and during cold exposure (−10 °C) for an entire circadian cycle. The aim was to study how changes in MR accorded...